


Monarchomachy

by Artemis_Crimson



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, F/M, Gore, Hive nonsense, Mental Parasite, Other, Robogore, Self indulgence too, Self-Harm, Self-Mutilation, Size Difference, Two chapters are mostly the same but one is gorey and one ain't so on that note, also like. I read the marasanna and calus' canonical stuffing fic. and inquisition of the damned., current me: WE SWORE OFF SHAME AT 12 NO TAKE BACKS, maybe this is a mary sue, once again a large part of this was an excuse and exercise in exo anatomy headcanon, past me: oh maybe this is cringey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:35:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23079454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Crimson/pseuds/Artemis_Crimson
Summary: In which the scripture terms contracts pacts and conditions of worship are opened.
Relationships: Guardian/Xol (Destiny)
Kudos: 3





	1. Each hungry soul missing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the one with gore

She dreams, in a rare bought of sleep. The memory of ten thousand tons of ice, rock and half living flesh growing through it hanging above her head. The aftertaste of Nokris on her palm. The iridescent fracture of something she does not yet comprehend.  
In her memory she lies on powdered ice, staring unblinking at writhing shadows that echo in her mind.  
Xol curls through tunnels unseen, dipping out through gaps in the stone carved by attrition and acid. He’s cushioned by hive chitin and made larger by panic. Even though he’s the smallest of his kind and Adamantine towers over hers, the distortion doesn’t make much difference at their scale. Big enough to wrap around the old tower and squeeze.

She fluxes the power to her eyes and when she can see again she’s standing on the last platform before the warmind spire. Jagged tears in the metal and flaky hive ichor mean this is before they fight. She kneels to accept a valkyrie knowing Rasputin enjoys the pageantry. The weapon is, too warm, unfamiliar and writhing. Ragged armour and scales press patterns through her coat. Thick as her thigh and twice her height at least Xol wraps and winds his way around her.

He weighs;  
Nothing, light as gliding.  
Heavily, a guilty conscience and a collapsing wall.  
Familiar, like well worn armaments.  
Almost too much, like a star dying, her own body after the fall.  
Comfortably, on her shoulders, because she is an Exo and there is nothing they can not bear.

He arches off her shoulders, spiny tail flicking the hem of her robes back in place. A comforting coil finds it’s place around her waist, the dullest edge of a mandible nudges her head to the sky. War satellites and stars dance. Hive ships shred the dark. He bellows his message loud like a needy child. Adamantine offers a hand to his neck, so he’ll still enough to translate.

O TYRANT MINE. DEFINING RULE AND LONG AWAITED PROOF, FIND ME TAKE ME UP AND NEVER CAST ME ASIDE.

She thinks amused, she doesn’t have much choice in the matter, not with how he clings. The memory of it moves further into a dream stuttering foreword, holy light welling beneath her. Sulphuric glitter, bones larger than her ship. Vex metal coiling beneath. Hungry perfection, bland and amusing somehow that drinks from beneath the planets skin. Crown, command and the wish to be ruled.

Shadowed forms of Taken twitch but do not attack, scraping in mindless deference at the two of them.

Adamantine is one again, alone and powerful. They do turn now and she cuts them down until the blighted splatter of them dyes her armour inky black, scant drops at a time. She sheds it like snakeskin. It’s bled down through all her robes, but not reaching the metal of her hide. When Adamantine’s last layers drop she slowly walks forward to a pinprick rift of ascendancy, standing before it judging. She rubs the textured conductive padding of her fingertips together, trying to remember the trick. It’s like flexing a forgotten joint when sharp metal claws click into view. She digs them into the small tear to widen it, an inelegant method she can almost hear Toland and the other hive junkies shrieking about. Their logic does not need to be hers though, and if it was, if she took it up she’d have more right to this realm then anyone would like to think about.  
Reality crumples like stock paper beneath her fingers and she plucks a handful from the edge to neaten the hole. It flutters uselessly to the ground, splintering against her. Adamantine is quite ready to keep cutting away until she can step through but something brushes her fingers, meets her halfway.  
Xol, again.  
Same circumference as her bicep and almost as tall as she is, the portal is a squeeze. He curls up her, across her back. Finding traction with spikes, and the faint grove etched by centuries of carrying a rifle there before she had the light. He slips to the ground and Xol coils patiently before her.

They both know the problem, they are bound, they do not wish to part unceremoniously and yet she’s strong enough without him. Greedy for more as always as anyone can be but. Not in search of a god. No interest in being a devotee. No need for a sacred saviour. Adamantine won’t pay tithe or tribute and she searches out no orders, no righteous causes beyond her own. Xol has no interest in free gifts. Less in peace. Neither will admit it but they’re curious too.  
One finds an offer otherwise eventually. Shelter for knowledge. A means to fight and to feed. A research partner, a weapon, a favoured tool. To be carried and cared for. A parasite and host are how things have to stay, the motions of a pact the same, changing clauses aside. She sets to work while Xol whispers a dead hymn.

Exo carry the irrevocable motions of their life’s work with them through resets, so once upon a time she must have been practiced in her own (or others if she was lucky) maintenance.  
Her outermost armour comes away relatively easily, cuirass to thigh are meant to pried up. Each is a heavy relic alloy, the outermost layers of her are coated in a porous insulating paint. When she loses a piece or if she breaks she needs her Ghost to fix the damage. The metal and method of enamelling she just can’t figure out how to replicate or repair. Her composition limits her to matters of assembly alone.  
So she does not let her hands shake when she stacks her removed lames carefully.

Muscle fibres are anchored with small beads in little clusters alongside the hydraulics of her ribcage.

No lines are ruptured when she pulls pistons and tubes out of the way but artificial unguent leaks out nonetheless.  
She doesn’t breathe like this, hideless, armourless. The fluid messily coating her thorax, the exposed tubing through which it flows are more than enough to cool her. The motion of it is too close to involuntary and might jostle precariously deactivated silicene transistors.  
This hurts in a distantly manageable way already, she does not want to deal with those fiddly things in the middle of the screaming agony she should be in.

More muscle fibres need to come off, the front of her is beginning to look like a flower with each petalled fascicle.

The flexible linings of her insides aren’t truly armour, yet they won’t tear like flesh either. Still she wriggles the razor point of claws back beneath before dipping both her hands inside. The swell of her stomach and lungs are easy to find. Even when Adamantine is all zipped up head to toe the four of them protrude faintly, pushing against planckart. It’s more flexible than metal scales and lies in her lap like an apron at the moment. Normally they help her move, she finds this severally limiting. If she where to lie down she wouldn’t be able to pull herself up unassisted. Adamantine only stays sitting in place due to the sturdy interlocking struts of her spine, fingers now scraping at the twisting column. The esophagus to her third lung is nestled slightly off centre and this is the easiest way to find it. Once it’s been pinched open she can squeeze the dead air out of it. It whistles through her mandibles. Silicon oil is what flows throughout her, veins of it loop in her lungs to be cooled. It rushes out too in an unpleasant chill, uncomfortable influx on reservoirs.  
The frontal two follow, pat down neatly and a fist sized path to the heart of her is cleared.

Rings of interlocking chambers strung in intricate patterns. Running parallel and sequence. It’s a knot of theory she calls a reactor.  
She can’t lean forward or backwards, and even though she’s more exposed than ever she isn’t inclined to bare her throat. Instead she offers a hand, glimmering with rogue interstitial oil still. His eye is hooded and his song quiet, so she leaves a thumbprint sized oil stain.

Xol changes again. Or maybe she does.  
Half as wide as her wrist, long as her middle finger to elbow joint if he stretches out, tiny enough to wear as a bond should the desire take her. Even with her precariously paralyzed torso he’s light enough to lift. It’s strange to coax a parasite in, stranger still how she can feel the weight of him writhe. A warm shiver runs along her spine.  
Queasy suddenly, a novel sensation, she presses a hand to her operculum and can feel the nervous movement beneath. When Xol is settled and while his voice begins to filter in she puts herself back together.

Adamantine slowly rises, balance still slightly off. The remains of the taken have pooled in front of the door. Wispy new portals and old bodies climb from the muck. Xol purrs comfort at her in the love language of armour teeth chitin spikes bone. Her jaw aches and thorns find their way out between all her seams. Newly sharp, she pulls a trick she thinks they’ll both like the feeling of. She sets herself a flaming crown, takes wings from the heavens and forges the dread light of stars into a sword. They advance on the leaderless taken below her in sweeping flight.


	2. Every haunting ambition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the one without gore

She dreams, in a rare bought of sleep. The memory of ten thousand tons of ice, rock and half living flesh growing through it hanging above her head. The aftertaste of Nokris on her palm. The iridescent fracture of something she does not yet comprehend.   
In her memory she lies on powdered ice, staring unblinking at writhing shadows that echo in her mind.   
Xol curls through tunnels unseen, dipping out through gaps in the stone carved by attrition and acid. He’s cushioned by hive chitin and made larger by panic. Even though he’s the smallest of his kind and Adamantine towers over hers, the distortion doesn’t make much difference at their scale. Big enough to wrap around the old tower and squeeze.

She fluxes the power to her eyes and when she can see again she’s standing on the last platform before the warmind spire. Jagged tears in the metal and flaky hive ichor mean this is before they fight. She kneels to accept a valkyrie knowing Rasputin enjoys the pageantry. The weapon is, too warm, unfamiliar and writhing. Ragged armour and scales press patterns through her coat. Thick as her thigh and twice her height at least Xol wraps and winds his way around her.

He weighs;  
Nothing, light as gliding.  
Heavily, a guilty conscience and a collapsing wall.  
Familiar, like well worn armaments.  
Almost too much, like a star dying, her own body after the fall.  
Comfortably, on her shoulders, because she is an Exo and there is nothing they can not bear.

He arches off her shoulders, spiny tail flicking the hem of her robes back in place. A comforting coil finds it’s place around her waist, the dullest edge of a mandible nudges her head to the sky. War satellites and stars dance. Hive ships shred the dark. He bellows his message loud like a needy child. Adamantine offers a hand to his neck, so he’ll still enough to translate.

O TYRANT MINE. DEFINING RULE AND LONG AWAITED PROOF, FIND ME TAKE ME UP AND NEVER CAST ME ASIDE.

She thinks amused, she doesn’t have much choice in the matter, not with how he clings. The memory of it moves further into a dream stuttering foreword, holy light welling beneath her. Sulphuric glitter, bones larger than her ship. Vex metal coiling beneath. Hungry perfection, bland and amusing somehow that drinks from beneath the planets skin. Crown, command and the wish to be ruled.

Shadowed forms of Taken twitch but do not attack, scraping in mindless deference at the two of them.

Adamantine is one again, alone and powerful. They do turn now and she cuts them down until the blighted splatter of them dyes her armour inky black, scant drops at a time. She sheds it like snakeskin. It’s bled down through all her robes, but not reaching the metal of her hide. When Adamantine’s last layers drop she slowly walks forward to a pinprick rift of ascendancy, standing before it judging. She rubs the textured conductive padding of her fingertips together, trying to remember the trick. It’s like flexing a forgotten joint when sharp metal claws click into view. She digs them into the small tear to widen it, an inelegant method she can almost hear Toland and the other hive junkies shrieking about. Their logic does not need to be hers though, and if it was, if she took it up she’d have more right to this realm then anyone would like to think about.  
Reality crumples like stock paper beneath her fingers and she plucks a handful from the edge to neaten the hole. It flutters uselessly to the ground, splintering against her. Adamantine is quite ready to keep cutting away until she can step through but something brushes her fingers, meets her halfway.  
Xol, again.  
Half as wide as her wrist, long as her middle finger to elbow joint if he stretches out, tiny enough to wear as a bond should the desire take her. He stares from the flat of her hand, the crook of her arm, neither ready to move.

They both know the problem, they are bound, they do not wish to part unceremoniously and yet she’s strong enough without him. Greedy for more as always as anyone can be but. Not in search of a god. No interest in being a devotee. No need for a sacred saviour. Adamantine won’t pay tithe or tribute and she searches out no orders, no righteous causes beyond her own. Xol has no interest in free gifts. Less in peace. Neither will admit it but they’re curious too.

Xol finds an offer otherwise eventually. Shelter for knowledge. A means to fight and to feed. A research partner, a weapon, a favoured tool. To be carried and cared for. Their pact is this, she will tear him to reality and find him. She’s going to stride into the ascendant world and tie him to a place still his but not entwined with the hive. She sets to work while Xol slithers further up past her arm, not coiling not as a bond but a gorget and whispers a dead hymn. This is still an invasion, the throne beyond doesn’t belong to her and it doesn’t belong to the worm around her throat. Something she needs is on the otherside, a larger portal is required. Though if she believes her strength can move the world then so it will, and Xol is a fulcrum.

She’s walked Ascendant planes before, she knows she will again.  
She doesn’t belong in this space, not in someone else’s court. But the fabric of reality is like any mundane cloth and it grows soft, comfortable with repeated use. The stone floats loosely here like a shoreline dream of land. She thinks the wind is meant to howl, that the shards of dust should chip her exoskeleton.  
She thinks she doesn’t care what the storm wants. The cacophony of chaos is a dawnsong to them, the melody and lyrics passed between their new halves.  
Her Ghost has not followed her here to this dream, a fall would be permanently fatal. Adamantine wants to show off and blinks from one circuit-heavy stone to the next with a flourish. Xol is her compass here, she doesn’t know what they’re looking for. He’s quiet, taciturn for once, guiding more through nudge and hushed feel than a voice.  
In the distance she sees small thrones fracture and consumed, she feels something out of place hanging above her head and the debris around her shift.  
Methane pools from the sea above her head, gravity shaken and the wind is airless. Plantlife is crushed beneath her feet as she runs, needles in grey and monochrome brush are shredded when she picks up the pace.   
The world is both more familiar and less the deeper she goes. An icy vault dreadful to each of them, they can’t agree how the puzzle is meant to fit but the component feeling is the same.  
A garden world, old bone, milk rock and sharp circuits again. She skids to a stop in front of a great bronze mirror. Patterns like bismuth mark the edges and the world cuts into available spectrums. Moss creeps up the underside of her platform, the area around the mirror is pristine. If she was human, awoken, anything else she’d be panting for breath. Adamantine presses her hands to her reflection and stares.

Xol changes one last time. Or maybe she changes for the first, finding a more suitable shape too. He drips down her body, same circumference as her bicep and would measure almost as tall as she is now. He curls up her, across her back. Finding traction with spikes, and the faint grove etched by centuries of carrying a rifle there before she had the light.

The platform is too small and too large. The reflection is the wrong way around.  
Xol’s head at her hip is a counterbalance when the ground seems to grow. Blight here is not toxic, the taken in the distance do not scrape or attack. Adamantine shifts in front of the mirror, naked as the day she was forged. The hazy mirror and the darkness around her cast her into something ghostly. They are a beast too vast to be swayed by the sea of screams. They are familiar and foreigner both.  
They do not wish to part but this is after all, only a dream. Work must still be done.   
Adamantine turns and bends down to let Xol find a crack in the slab. She presses her hand to her reflection’s palm once more, living metal cold to the touch, even when the last hint of green light has slipped away this is the only chill to her.  
She braces herself, digs her fingers into the bleeding alloy breaching the façade and wakes up.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy worm moon y'all!


End file.
